Chameleon - A City of London Thriller (48 page)

“
Katie, it
will be your job to keep this tight. She can squeal all she wants,
but don’t let up. The pain is too bad, but she can survive that.
Blood loss she can’t. Understand?” She smiled reassuringly at the
young woman. Katie Norman nodded, her jaw set in
determination.

***

Gil Davis
gunned the engine of the minibus. It was not the vehicle she would
have chosen for a race to the hospital seven miles away, but it was
all she had. She slammed the shift into drive and rammed her foot
onto the accelerator. The minivan smashed though the chain link
gates and onto Dinwiddle, before turning immediately left up
Seventh Street. By the time she reached Hull Street she was doing
over seventy miles an hour. Luckily there was little traffic south
of the river. The minivan held onto the road as it careened around
the corner and headed to the bridge.

By the time
Gil saw the sign for the hospital, her driving had attracted two
Richmond PD cruisers who were in hot pursuit, lights flashing,
sirens blazing. Gil smiled as the road ahead cleared. After one
final crazy turn onto Nine Miles Road, the van fishtailing madly,
the Hospital was in sight. Gil ignored the Ambulances Only sign and
slammed the van to a stop outside the emergency room
entrance.

Immediately
behind her the two cruisers screeched to a halt. The drivers were
out in a second, perched behind their doors, guns out of
holsters.

“
Stop!
Police!” they shouted in unison.

Gil carried on
helping a bloodstained and barely conscious Dee out of the back
seat of the van.

“
Either shoot
me, or come and help. This woman is dying!” Gil yelled.

The two
policemen looked at the woman who was wearing a leather jacket over
a blue bra, holstered their guns and ran to assist. Gil could be
arrested and handcuffed when the sick woman was safely on a
gurney.

Chapter
7
2

Darvell
Salvage Yard, East 7
^th
Street, Richmond, Virginia. USA, Monday
3pm.

By the time
Steve Post arrived at the co-ordinates he had been given, along
with significant back up, there was no need for the requested
silent approach. Already there were curious office and factory
workers gathering outside the entrance, alerted by gunfire and a
speeding minivan crashing through the gates. Steve manoeuvred his
SUV over the wrecked gates and into the yard, jumping from the car
when he saw human activity.

Gun drawn, he
followed the voices and found himself in a clearing in the midst of
scrap metal. He holstered his gun when he saw the carnage. A
paramedic from a neighbouring factory had fastened a tourniquet
around a balding man’s handless wrist and bent his arm double,
fastening a second tourniquet around the forearm and upper arm. The
man screamed in pain as the paramedic pulled the second tourniquet
tight, forcing the folded arms together in a tight embrace. The
bleeding slowed dramatically but Mitchinson lost
consciousness.

The paramedic
looked at the approaching FBI man, who was wearing a blue
windbreaker with the FBI logo in gold, and spoke
urgently.

“
These
tourniquets will lose him his arm but they may save his
life.”

An ambulance
siren approached. Steve looked around; there was no sign of Dee
anywhere. What was going on here? Dan Peterson, who had travelled
with Steve, secured the crime scene and issued orders to uniformed
cops, who were now arriving by the dozen.

Another office
worker was attending to Donkin, who was showing signs of life, his
eye lids flickering. She correctly identified a neck injury and
tried to prevent the police from searching him, knowing that any
movement could make it worse. She was unsuccessful, and Donkin was
carefully frisked.

“
My God, Dee,
what happened here? Where are you?” Steve inadvertently said out
loud.

***

The two
ambulances had left the junk yard, sirens blazing, and the crime
scene technicians were now bagging evidence, including the remnants
of a man’s right hand.

Steve’s phone
rang. It was Richmond PD.

“
Special
Agent Post?” The policeman wanted confirmation.

“
That’s me,”
Steve acknowledged.

“
Sir, we have
three women here at the Da Vita Community Hospital. One is being
prepped for surgery, two are OK but one of them has committed a
string of driving offences. The mouthy one - they are all English,
by the way - said she refused to leave the hospital until you
arrived. She said she is the daughter of Senator Miles, so we
thought we should call before we arrested her.”

“
Hold those
women there. I’ll be there in ten minutes to take charge of the
situation, Officer.....”

“
Sergeant
Trelawney, sir.”

“
OK
Trelawney, secure the hospital until I can figure out what’s going
on.”

Steve
concluded the call, grabbed Dan Peterson and they headed off to the
hospital, leaving the bloodbath behind.

Chapter
7
3

DaVita
Richmond
Community
Hospital
,
Virginia. USA. Monday 3:30pm.

Barry was
drowsy from blood loss and morphine. His wound had been sealed
temporarily, and he was connected to several monitors, a saline bag
and a plasma bag. He had overheard the doctor talking to the
policeman guarding the door.

He was going
to lose his right arm below the elbow, but that would not be done
at this hospital and nor could it be attempted until his blood
count stabilised. However, the doctor was concerned less about the
loss of the limb than he was about serious irregularities in heart
pattern, which suggested that Barry may have suffered damage to his
heart muscle.

The policeman
listened with interest, but insisted that the patient be secured as
he was likely to be charged with kidnap, serious assault and,
potentially, murder. One armed or not, Barry realised that he was
destined to spend his remaining days in a hellhole of a US
prison.

The doctor
agreed to keep him secured but comfortable until such times as it
was safe to transfer him to a unit with more coronary support. The
room fell silent and Barry drifted back into a dreamless
sleep.

***

Mere yards
away from Barry’s cubicle, the hard pressed medical staff were even
more downbeat. Rob Donkin had suffered a cervical spinal injury
that had paralysed him from the neck down. His first and second
vertebrae were badly damaged. The doctors had stabilised him, but
he was in an induced coma and he would remain unconscious until
they could get him to a specialist spinal unit. This would be
harder than it sounded because of the shortage of spinal surgery
beds on the eastern seaboard, due to the high number of spinal
injuries arriving back from the war zones. It would also be
difficult because Donkin had no visible signs of
insurance.

The most
likely outcome would be extradition, by an air ambulance transfer,
to the UK. The US police would have liked to prosecute him, but
they recognised that he was already imprisoned in a body that would
never work again.

***

Dee Hammond
had fared better than her two attackers. She was still in surgery
but no-one was harbouring negative thoughts about the outcome. Test
after test had been carried out and eventually, after much
discussion, the surgeon had agreed to continue with the procedure.
No-one would tell Gillian or Katie why they had delayed surgery.
All they were told was that she would be fine and that she would be
expected to make a full recovery.

The bullet
wounds themselves would offer little challenge, even to a small
community hospital surgical team, but there were complications. The
bullet had nicked a kidney and other organs on its way through to
shattering her twelfth rib, sometimes referred to as a floating rib
because it is not attached to the sternum.

Steve Post
listened carefully to Katie Norman’s story of the day so far, and
was surprised at the maternal protection offered to her by Gillian
Davis. Gillian filled in the gaps as she held Katie’s hand. What
she had to say shocked Steve Post and forced him to reconsider his
preconceptions about the former Chameleon.

She spoke as
if she was being officially debriefed, and Steve realised that she
must have been through this process many times before, so he sat
and listened without interruption as Dan Peterson recorded the
session on a handheld dictation machine.

“
I knew that
Dee Hammond was unhappy with me, and although I have always
accepted my culpability, that is often not enough for some people.
Wary of her intentions, I decided to keep track of her whilst in
the USA. Purely for my self preservation, you
understand.”

She smiled,
and continued. “I cloned her phone using my adapted IPhone and IPad
and some security software used in law enforcement circles, called
TriposDub. I also fed her Sim card details and GPS details into my
iPad tracking application. I thought that I’d been very clever
doing all this while she was asleep, but when she awoke and found
her phone battery was flat I think she suspected. She didn’t say
anything, however, so I may have been a little paranoid.

When I
overheard the first call from Donkin I knew that she might be in
trouble and so I had a choice - leave her to it or keep an eye on
her. At that point I had no idea what Donkin wanted, nor that he
was working with Mitchinson, and so I gave it some considered
thought and decided I couldn’t sit by and watch her or Katie be
hurt.

I live in the
lodge behind the Senator’s house, and the lodge contains the locked
gun cabinet. I opened the lock - it took all of twenty seconds -
and had a look inside. As expected there were no handguns, but
there were two hunting rifles and plenty of ammunition.

I selected the
Browning X Bolt rifle because it was better weighted for a woman of
my stature and the sights seemed to be in good order. I loaded some
7mm 08 Remington cartridges that had a 150 gram load and went into
the woods. It took me ten minutes, but I got it sighted in and took
the limbs off two trees. You Americans certainly make sure that if
you hit it, it doesn’t walk away.”

She paused
thoughtfully before continuing.

“
I drove up
to Richmond from Lynchburg. It took just over an hour, and I parked
in the hotel car park and kept my eye on Dee’s Chrysler 300. When
the phone rang again I recognised Mitchinson’s voice and knew
immediately that Dee was in trouble. Taking a risk, and knowing
that she couldn’t, I forwarded the text with coordinates to you.
Your number was in her contact list.”

“
That was
you?” Steve asked.

“
Yes. I was
hoping that you would turn up, to save the damsel in distress, so I
could concentrate on meeting up with Barry. He tried to have me
killed, you know.” She was grinning.

“
I wondered
what was going on,” Steve admitted. “When the hotel manager
eventually deigned to call me I had already set things in motion. I
guess I need to thank you,” he added.

“
Go on,
then,” Gillian teased.

“
Don’t push
your luck; you’re still in very deep water,” Steve threatened, and
so Gil continued.

“
I followed
Dee to the scrap yard, and when she disappeared with Barry I
carried out a quick surveillance of the area. I came to the
conclusion that he had placed no look outs. I collected the rifle
from my Tahoe and slipped into the yard as quietly as I
could.

Unfortunately,
Mitchinson, more by good luck than by any tradecraft, had picked a
great spot to keep his hostages. To get a clear shot I had to climb
up an unstable scrap mountain without making any noise and find a
stable shooting position. Luckily for me the scrap was well
compacted, and I found a hidey hole on top of an old Chevy
Chevette, from where I could see the whole area.

I was just
setting up when I heard the first shot. Some idiot boy raised a
pistol and fired, and the blow back nearly knocked him off his
feet. If he hadn’t been so close he wouldn’t have hit Dee at all.
In fact, he would have been lucky to hit the scrap yard and he was
right in the middle of it. It was the sloppiest shot I’ve ever
witnessed. By the way, the gun he used was bagged by one of your
uniformed policemen. I picked it up carefully by the barrel so that
I didn’t smudge any prints.

I saw the
blood and was amazed when Dee remained standing. The boy was amazed
as well, and he raised his gun for the killing shot, but Dee laid
him out with one punch. Barry cracked her on the head and she went
down.

Dee was out
for four minutes, in which time Barry Mitchinson tied her up. I
would probably have blown his head off if I had a decent shot
without Katie or Dee in the way. Anyway, I sighted the rifle and
waited. When he raised the gun to Katie’s head I knew I had no
choice. I fired to disarm, not to kill. The hunting ammo did its
duty, and from twenty five yards I don’t miss, even with an
unfamiliar rifle.